The paper analyzes challenges of modern society affecting changes in education that determines the current directions of didactics development. The authors establish that in didactics there are: 1) expansion of the set of objects studied by didactics (the study of general secondary education is supplemented by the study of higher, corporate, family education, education of students with different educational needs), consideration of the learning process in the context of digitalization; 2) the development of methodological approaches to didactic research (activation of empirical research, an increase in the role of research methods of the humanities in didactics, setting the task of developing evidence-based learning research); 3) activation of interdisciplinary research in education (consideration of didactic objects from the standpoint of related sciences - didactics, psychology, cognitive science, sociology). The paper consideres conceptual provisions in the development of didactics of higher education.